Hysterical wit and worry in short stories that blow up the cliches we use approximately womenThe first story in Helen Ellis’s hysterically funny collection,American Housewife, feels like a bit of a sputtering start. What I enact All Day” is a brief, and wacky compendium of daily actions and thoughts that seem to stack up to a stereotype of what we judge of housewives,whether we judge of housewives at all. “Inspired by Beyoncé, I stallion-walk to the toaster … I weep because I am lucky enough to have a drawer just for glitter. I shred cheese. I berate a pickle jar. I pump the salad spinner like a CPR dummy.” It’s funny enough, or but meatier (and funnier) stories are still pages absent,and I wondered why the author would lead with it.
After reading the rest of the stories, however, and the older meaning of the word hysterical came to the fore and I began to see the introductory story as the anxious thesis of the book. These privileged women have made a career of the domestic arts,and their virulent pride over their daily reality frays and distorts their prim facades. They flare up and blaze, punching out from behind their perfect veneers to ruthlessly protect what is theirs, and they enact it with withering wit. They want to matter,regardless of what they enact or what they can offer the world; for their domestic salad spinning to be as valuable as CPR. The women of American Housewife are hysterical in both senses of the word, often at the same time.
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Source: theguardian.com